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Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

aalto.fi

171–180 of 244 posts

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#171
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your choices are very limited, but you can get an android phone supported by LineageOS or other alternative roms.

I have tried, a long time ago, LineageOS on Samsung Galaxy S3 and S4. The both of the ports were so buggy, that by those experiences I could not trust the maintainers to be capable of securing the system. It may have been a false assumption, but I had to think stability/bugs and security must correlate at some levels.

Actually if you link popular software with a hardened memory allocator, apps will just crash a lot instead of allowing buffer overflows that are shockingly common.

YOLO mallocs most operating systems ship allow an application to -feel- faster and more stable at the expense of security.

If you want software to be stable in a strict malloc environment, write it in rust :)

To be fair though, LineageOS security is actually terrible. Do not use it. If you must have an Android device CalyxOS is the least bad option today.

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#172
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are fundamentally different in that two of them derive revenue solely* from exploiting your data, and one of them doesn't. * by-and-large

it seems Apple's hardware revenue have started to plateau, and their services revenue is in jeopardy with the new EU changes to the App Store it wouldn't surprise me if Apple started ramping up their data revenue in the near future to compensate

> and their services revenue is in jeopardy with the new EU changes to the App Store

the services revenue is at an all time high and keeps climbing:

https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/14629/apple-services-reve...

re. app store, the EU market represents just 7% of their worldwide app store revenues, most probably due to the fact the EU market is 65% android:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/01/apple-says-eu-represents-7...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/639928/market-share-mobi....

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#173

Apple should provide an option to opt-out of Siri "learn from app" for ALL applications. At present, this must be done individually for every app, https://www.imore.com/how-stop-siri-learning-how-you-use-app... . When you later install new apps after setting up the device, you have to remember to go into Settings and opt-out again, for every app, forever. How many people know that iOS devices will default to Siri rea…

It would be much better if I could just uninstall Siri. I don't want a voice assistant, and never have.

“Siri” (whatever it has morphed into) is a pervasive DWIM engine in iOS these days. When you do a search for an app Siri decides what to display (e.g. when I go to a certain location with a “smart” lock and pull down search, the app for that lock is always offered first, but never in other locations).

These days the voice part is just a UI mode. I use it on my watch and occasionally on my phone when I am wearing earbuds and my phone is in my pocket, but have it disabled on my Mac.

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#174
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone much more tech savvy than me should try to use Charles Proxy on an iOS device and see how often your phone is communicating with Apple servers. It’s pretty wild. You can also see this just by running an iOS simulator with Xcode on a Mac that has Little Snitch installed. The amount of phoning home by iOS (and macOS, for that matter) is shocking.

Little Snitch could use a 1-click on/off ruleset for blocking all Apple network connections (17.x.x.x) except for the published whitelist of Apple notification servers. That would block most of the real-time phoning home. The block could be disabled manually for security updates. If notifications aren't needed, block all of 17.

I saw this idea implemented in the book "Extreme privacy: macOS devices". The author also provides importable profiles that you can switch between, e.g. to enable/disable security updates. I haven't tried them yet, but I am now more motivated to do so.

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Excellent. Then Apple can provide one-click, one-time opt out for all apps, instead of consuming CPU cycles, battery life and hundreds of avoidable and unwanted user actions over the lifetime of a phone. > It never gets sent to Apple and no other application can read it. Malware can read it. See the list of Apple iOS Security Updates. If Apple doesn't receive the data and the user doesn't want the data, let's avoid c…

Then malware can just turn it back on and then read it? You really don't want the malware to begin with I'm thinking.

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#176
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be much better if I could just uninstall Siri. I don't want a voice assistant, and never have.

“Siri” (whatever it has morphed into) is a pervasive DWIM engine in iOS these days. When you do a search for an app Siri decides what to display (e.g. when I go to a certain location with a “smart” lock and pull down search, the app for that lock is always offered first, but never in other locations). These days the voice part is just a UI mode. I use it on my watch and occasionally on my phone when I am wearing earb…

> DWIM

Siri is worse than Cortana in this respect…

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple Configurator is only allowed for a Managed Apple ID.

I was able to use Apple Configurator to put a phone into single app mode with a normal, non-developer ID. Maybe there is a subset of things you can do?

> single-app mode

Isn’t that what “guided access” is for?

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to use Apple Configurator to put a phone into single app mode with a normal, non-developer ID. Maybe there is a subset of things you can do?

> single-app mode Isn’t that what “guided access” is for?

No. Guided access doesn’t work well for creating a control panel on a wall. I wanted it to boot into the app with no password.

Guided access is finicky and the failure modes are extremely bad for preventing random people from accessing things they shouldn’t.

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon serving me ads for washing machines, right after I bought one Counterintuitive, but there’s a chance that the one you bought didn’t work out - and that’s high enough to make you much more likely than the general population to buy a washing machine. Consider: in the past 20 years there have been about two weeks (total) where an ad for a washing machine could be relevant. That’s about 0.2% of the time. If the…

I don't buy this; because it always happens when I've bought something from them, not from elsewhere. Amazon knows if the one I bought worked out or not because I RMAd it or didn't; yet, every time I buy something, I'm inundated with suggestions for the same thing until I've searched or bought a sufficient number of other things, to replace them, and the cycle begins again. Don't get me wrong, they have some fairly d…

People often research replacements before they return an item.

To imagine that Amazon hasn't data scienced this out, to completion, is absurd.

Re: Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected

#180
post #50

I remain shocked anyone trusts Meta, Google, or Apple marketing on privacy. These companies are all fundamentally similar in that their proprietary software collects an insane amount of data that will end up in the hands of your enemies either by sale, court order, or security compromise. It is relatively easy to opt out of all of these companies and take some actual control over your privacy.

I know it's crazy but I trust Apple a lot more than I would Google or Meta when it comes to my data.
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